The world according to Barry Chindouche: Polymath, polyglot, polygamist .

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Monday, 17 January 2011

Brief Histories #2: Inventions

Hi there,

Barry Chindouche here - I don’t ron ron ron, I don’t ron ron.

Here is the second in the ever popular “Brief histories” series. Today: Inventions.

The mother of all necessity

Meaden: Necessities bosom buddy

Life is full of gaps. That’s when inventions step in and say “Hello gap, consider yourself FILLED”. Before anything had ever been invented, people spent almost 90% of their day walking around, clicking their fingers and saying “oooooh, if only I had a, you know, thing.”

Then a tetchy troglodyte started bashing together some flint and created fire. He then used that fire to light a roll of tobacco leaf, and thus the world’s first invention was born: the cigarette.

Detailed cave paintings tell us that this sparked an entrepreneurial flurry. By 5,000 BC, the list of inventions had grown to include: slapstick comedy, cricket, pornography, anti-semitism, gravy, passports and dress down Fridays1.

Pre-sliced = Twice as nice

Sliced bread is the modern day yardstick for how useful inventions are. However, there have been a number of landmark inventions that, for a period of time, were held as the greatest invention ever. See figure 1 for details.

Of course, the modern day phrase is technically “The best thing since Kingsmill-sliced-50/50-bread”. White bread that’s good for you? That is off the strongest of chains.

AMSSTUFF

Inventions cannot come into being without some very special people. Those special people are, in alphabetical order:

Richard Branson

Barry Chindouche2

Theo Paphitis

Alan Sugar

So there you have it. Go out and invent something. Or don't.

B. Chindouche

1Of course, these were British inventions. Cave paintings from other countries, like France, show little or no progress until around 50 BC.2An ancient Egyptian invention.